Anne Braden, one of the white heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and the over-all movement for human rights in America, will speak to the Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration of the Birmingham Peace Project at 7 p.m. Saturday, January 14.

She will be joined by Malik Rahim of New Orleans and Common Cause.

Anne is originally an Alabamian and worked as a reporter for the Anniston Star, according to the Rev. Jack Zylman of Birmingham. In 1956, she and her husband, Carl Braden, sold a home they had bought in Louisville, Kentucky, to a black man, and they were charged with sedition. Carl actually went to prison for 7 months for this act of integration.

In 1961, Carl went to prison for 9 months with Frank Wilkinson for defending the First Amendment against the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Wilkinson died this week at age 91, still fighting for the First Amendment freedoms for which he suffered.

"I was present in 1962 in Chicago at his first address upon his release," Zylman said. "Anne Braden is still fighting for freedom, for blacks and for all. She is especially fighting the new McCarthyism that is sweeping the nation today, under the Presidency of George W. Bush."

He said the event will be a renewal of what her husband, Wilkinson and many others suffered in an earlier age.

It is especially appropriate, Zylman said, because Dr. King held a reception for Carl Braden and Wilkinson at Morehouse College in Atlanta the night before they went to prison in 1961. They were united in the struggle for freedom for all.

"This is an opportunity to connect the dots in our history of repression, and to join in common cause across the ages," Zylman said. "Those who forget history are doomed to relive it."